Nicol Jarvie—peace be wi’ them baith—and Elspeth was the daughter of Parlane MacFarlane, at the Sheeling o’ Loch Sloy. Now, this Parlane MacFarlane, as his surviving daughter, Maggy MacFarlane, alias MacNab, wha married Duncan MacNab o’ Stuckavrallachan, can testify, stood as near to your gudeman, Robin MacGregor, as in the fourth degree of kindred, for—”

The virago lopped the genealogical tree, by demanding haughtily, “If a stream of rushing water acknowledged any relation with the portion withdrawn from it for the mean domestic uses of those who dwelt on its banks?”

“Vera true, kinswoman,” said the Bailie; “but for a’ that, the burn wad be glad to hae the mill-dam back again in simmer, when the chuckie stanes are white in the sun. I ken weel eneugh you Hieland folk haud us Glasgow people light and cheap for our language and our claes; but everybody speaks their native tongue that they learned in infancy; and it would be a daft-like thing to see me wi’ my fat wame in a short Hieland coat, and my puir short houghs gartered below the knee, like ane o’ your lang-legged gillies—Mair by token, kinswoman,” he continued, in defiance of various intimations by which Dougal seemed to recommend silence, as well as of the marks of impatience which the Amazon evinced at his loquacity, “I wad hae ye to mind that the king’s errand whiles comes in the cadger’s gate, and that, for as high as ye may think o’ the gudeman, as it’s right every wife should honour her husband—there’s Scripture warrant for that—yet as high as ye haud him, as I was saying, I hae been serviceable to Rob ere now;—forbye a set o’ pearlins I sent yoursell when ye was gaun to be married, and when Rob was an honest weel-doing drover, and nane o’ this unlawfu’ wark, wi’ fighting, and flashes, and fluf-gibs, disturbing the king’s peace and disarming his soldiers.”

He had apparently touched on a key which his kinswoman could not brook. She drew herself up to her full height, and betrayed the acuteness of her feelings by a laugh of mingled scorn and bitterness.

“Yes,” she said, “you, and such as you, might claim a relation to us when we stopped to be the paltry wretches fit to exist under your dominion, as your hewers of wood and drawers of water—to find cattle for your banquets, and subjects for your laws to oppress and trample on—But now we are free—free by the very act which left us neither house nor hearth, food nor covering—which bereaved me of all—of all—and makes me groan when I think I must still cumber the earth for other purposes than those of vengeance. And I will carry on the work this day has so well commenced, by a deed that shall break all bands between MacGregor and the Lowland churls.—Here—Allan—Dougal—bind these Sassenachs neck and heel together, and throw them into the Highland loch to seek for their Highland kinsfolk.”

The Bailie, alarmed at this mandate, was commencing an expostulation, which probably would have only inflamed the violent passions of the person whom he addressed, when Dougal threw himself between them, and in his own language, which he spoke with a fluency and rapidity strongly contrasted by the slow, imperfect, and idiot-like manner in which he expressed himself in English, poured forth what I doubt not was a very animated pleading in our behalf.

His mistress replied to him, or rather cut short his harangue, by exclaiming in English (as if determined to make us taste in anticipation the full bitterness of death), “Base dog, and son of a dog, do you dispute my commands?—should I tell ye to cut out their tongues and put them into each other’s throats, to try which would there best knap Southron, or to tear out their hearts and put them into each other’s breasts, to see which would there best plot treason against the MacGregor—and such things have been done of old in the day of revenge, when our fathers had wrongs to redress—Should I command you to do this, would it be your part to dispute my orders?”

“To be sure, to be sure,” Dougal replied, with accents of profound submission; “her pleasure suld be done—tat’s but reason—but an it were—tat is, an it could be thought the same to her to coup the ill-faured loon of ta redcoat Captain, and hims corporal Cramp, and twa three o’ the redcoats into the loch, hersell wad do’t wi’ muckle mair great satisfaction than to hurt ta honest civil shentlemans as were friends to the Gregarach, and came up on the Chief’s assurance, and not to do no treason, as hersell could testify.”


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